The parliamentary Treasury Committee has published data about UK banking outages following letters to CEOs.
Between January 2023 and February 2025, the top nine UK banks suffered at least 158 banking IT failures. These incidents accumulated at least 803 hours, the equivalent of more than 33 days, of unplanned tech and systems outages.
Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Dame Meg Hillier MP, said: “For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, losing access to banking services on payday can be a terrifying experience.
“Even when rectified relatively quickly, it can cause real panic, which is why we wanted to get a proper understanding of why unplanned banking outages happen and how banks and building societies respond. And we know some can go on for several days.”
This data, published by the Treasury Committee, follows a series of letters to the CEOs of the largest banks. These letters requested information such as the number of IT failures and how long each incident lasted.
Some banks also shared reasons for failures, with the most common ones being problems with third-party suppliers, disruption caused by changing systems and internal software malfunctions.
“The fact there has been enough outages to fill a whole month within the last two years shows customers’ frustrations are completely valid,” added Hillier.
“The reality is that this data shows even the most successful banks and building societies hit technical glitches. What’s critical is they react swiftly and ensure customers are kept informed throughout.”
As Hillier noted, and the data shows, these issues have become more prevalent in the UK banking sector. Outside the parameters of this investigation, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, TSB and Bank of Scotland apps experienced failures on 28 February.
Additionally, Barclays customers were also unable to access all of its services between 31 January and 2 February. Though Barclay’s most recent outage is not included in the statistics above, the committee probed for more information.
Barclays confirmed that 56% of online payments during the incident failed, adding that the bank expects to pay between £5m and £7.5m in compensation for ‘inconvenience and distress’.
The Treasury Committee states that when assessing all of the information provided by Barclays, the bank could pay out up to £12.5m due to IT incidents. Notably, the second highest amount paid by an institution in the last two years is £350,000 by the Bank of Ireland – a significant jump which reaffirms the frequency of these problems.
Hillier concluded: “I am grateful to the banks for their responses and reassured that they are doing all they can to minimise the impact on their customers. I am particularly thankful to those who are compensating their customers well for the stress they endure and would encourage all to reflect on whether they are doing enough in that regard.”
